Designing a website - which software?

[Confabulous]

Guys,

I'm just about to start designing a dating website. I've got Dreamweaver MX 2004 (or are there better packages out there?), a bloody big manual and a head full of ideas. It's got to be able to store member profiles, send emails between members in the site itself, and it's got to be able to support Paypal/WorldPay etc.

This is sort of a budget thing - I don't have enough money to contract it out, and besides off all the designs I've seen, none seem to be right. Obviously I'll pay for hosting etc. Oh, and I know almost nothing about web design. The site has to be not just good, but excellent.

Can it be done with just the manual and a bit of brainpower? Would I be better contracting it out? My reasoning is that if I want to avoid paying for site updates for the rest of my days, I'd better start learning :uhoh: :E

Tall order or no?

Confab

PS: If I did contract the site out, any reasonable guess about how much it would cost?

[joe2812]

Something like that you're probably better off getting a pro to do.

It'll probably be a database driven site so you need to hook application forms up to the database, then the pages to recall info from the database etc, so maybe an ASP format?

As well as your DW Bible, look at Dreamweaver MX Unleashed (use amazon), aswell as online tutorials for the sort of thing you need. Try the Macromedia forums for help too.

Tall order i'd say, especially if you're new to it all!

If theres any available 18-21yr old blone women however, send 'em my way? :E

Good luck!!

[Confabulous]

If theres any available 18-21yr old blone women however, send 'em my way?

You can have all the women you want if I can get this site up!

They'll all be Irish though! :E

[joe2812]

Just did a quick search and came up with a few tutorials and sites which might be worth bookmarking...

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Dreamweaver/12

http://database.2ndwebdir.com/go.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcodeproject.com%2Faspnet%2Fdotnetnews. asp

www.macromedia.com/support/dreamweaver/tutorial_index.htm

www.webmasterworld.com/forum10/3481.htm

[FunkyMunky]

With the requirements you list, it sounds as if this site is going to need at least some form of ASP or PHP based coding, as well as a suitable SQL driven database. Very time consuming, especially if you're new to it - I'd hire someone else to do it. Once the site coding itself is done, many sites can be updated from within themselves by users without knowledge of the code. You're still going to need someone knowledgeable to maintain it however.

Even the basic concept of the site itself seems to require a lot of effort - do such socialising sites have to be regulated in any way; would the site be operating as a business?

Definitely a tall order, even for a team of people. :8

[drauk]

It is unlikely that starting from scratch you'll get what you want in any acceptable timeframe.

If you feel you're able to design the visual side of things (i.e. how the pages look, what colours, fonts, images get used, etc) then you could do that bit yourself and have an expert do the programming work. It really doesn't matter much what language or tools the programmer uses, so don't let anyone blind you with science.

If you've not much money for this then obviously you don't want to go to a commercial development firm - find a part-timer or student. Your requirements are pretty straightforward and should be simple enough for anybody with some experience in creating database-backed websites.

[HelenD]

Visual Studio 2005 should suite your needs it even provides an access database for a back end store failing that you could use SQL server - the express edition is free.
The main thing to watch if you have to have a back end store is security of the site, the database will be prone to SQL injection attacks if input is not checked. You may need extra security if you are linking in to paypal - users wont want their credit card information transmitted over plain text.

[Bigwings]

You can also find some very useful info here, enjoy

http://www.good-tutorials.com/

Bigwings :ok:

[Stoney X]

I agree with drauk on this. The major problem with doing it yourself is the time it's going to take. I know because I'm in the middle of doing a similar project. It seems that everyday you bump into another little problem that requires research and experimentation to resolve. Great fun if you are into that sort of thing but a pain in the butt otherwise.

To save costs I've got a cheap old PC running Linux to do all the development on, so I'm not paying for server rental at this time. This means having to learn Linux for the operating system, Apache for the web server, MySQL for the database, C++ for server side processing (I'm a sucker for punishment!), Javascript for any client side processing, the list goes on. But that's the kind of thing I enjoy.

Regards
Stoney